How can the photographic image be a place for dialogue and conflict between the positions of the artists and dominating political, historical and aesthetical structures? In what way can we discuss the image in terms of agency – as an act or intervention? How can the image act and function in a time when many visual strategies have been disarmed or canonized? With these questions as a starting point, the project Between the Images presented works in which artists explicitly use or relate to the photographic image to highlight or renegotiate political, social or aesthetic conventions.

The project Between the Images, of which this book is partly documentation and partly continuation, was presented in Stockholm 2008 within the frame of Xposeptember, a biannual art event focusing on photographic image. Some of the discussions which arose from the works in the exhibitions, and in the related programme, are in this publication allowed to expand and develop in the form of new essays and contributions by the project’s participants.

A major influence for the project has been the legacy of an essayistic approach in moving images. The subjective perspective and the associative narrative often used by filmmakers in this tradition could be seen as a way of negotiating the dominant structures from an aesthetical as well as a political viewpoint. Using the essay as a point of departure the project also wanted to put forward some related methods used in order to discuss political and social structures.

On the occasion of the book release, Xposeptember has invited Felix Vogel, who is also one of the writers, to give a lecture. In his talk Felix Vogel will try to examine the potentiality of the image as agent and how we can understand images as a form of agency. The three different cases he will take into consideration are all, more or less, connected to the film essay: Magnus Bärtås’ video essay as a take on Chris Marker’s film Le Mystère Koumiko, Harun Farocki’s and Andrei Ujica’s Videogramme einer Revolution as well as Jean-Luc Godard’s and Anne-Marie Miéville’s project for Mozambique. All of those examples shed a very different light on the way stories and histories influence each other and what happens when images start to act.

Felix Vogel is a researcher and curator based in Berlin and Konstanz. Most recently, he was appointed curator of the 4. Bucharest Biennale in 2010.

Between the Images was presented in collaboration with Cinemateket of the Swedish Film Institute, Iaspis, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm and wip:konsthall and with support from the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, The Culture Administration of Stockholm and Stockholm County Council.

The Between the Images publication has been made possible with support from the abovementioned institutions and in co-production with the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm and Iaspis.